Tuesday, April 13, 2010

God of War #1

Wow. I have never played God of War but that comic was almost unreadable. The story by Marv Wolfman is pretty generic, very reminiscent of 300, in fact. Kratos is a young champion of Sparta who travels to recover some magic fire of Apollo to heal his deformed child. (As everyone knows, the unwell in Sparta are put to death.) It seems the sickly child is a gift from Ares who has designated Kratos as his champion in some sort of competition. Hermes, Hades, and others also have champions, but we only see Hades' barbarian prince. I assume he and Kratos will throw down later, but I'm not sure if I'll be here to see it. The story is generic at best and there is nothing to Kratos to make him interesting. He yells and stabs things a lot, but he seems pretty simple. People love this game, right? Is it because of the riveting story? I'm just not seeing it.

Andrea Sorrentino's art is striking at times but it's so moody and interpretive that I can't tell what's happening. Large sections of black ink have voice bubbles coming out of them (I think one is a wolf monster?) but I can't tell what is happening. Most of the characters are impressions more than figures. I would have liked a more iconic interpretation of the gods at least. Not my kind of comic.